"and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Shantih.

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Vision and Illusion

There is a fine line between
vision and illusion.Without a vision,
the people perish but I fear that in our need to have a vision we create
fanciful illusions. Our search for meaning turns up an answer we can believe in
and then, satisfied, we are comfortable with our place in the universe.Our existence then has value, we have a
destiny, and we are cradled in a foundational myth.I have come to the personal conclusion that our
old Gods are illusions. We are currently searching for new Gods.I do not claim that spirit world does not
exist only that our human measures of meaning and value are flawed.

I am a “cultural” Christian
and dependent upon its faith and stories for my heritage. If you ask me, are
you a Christian, Hindu, or Muslim?I can
only reply, Christian.And if we go
further and say, are you Christian or atheist—I say, Christian—a secular
Christian for sure but definitely not antagonistic to the faith. How can I
reject what has formed me? But some ask the question a different way, Are you
saved?No, I am not. Do you believe the Bible is the one and only
authoritative Word of God? No, I do not.I find meaning in other written words and sometimes in direct experience
of beauty and tranquility. I feel like
a seeker.God has not “spoken” to me in
unmistakable terms.He has not forgiven
me for all I may or may not do. Do I
believe in God?Yes-he undergirds the
universe.Who is Jesus then?No more God than Buddha, St. Augustine, or Mohammed. No transcendental divinity there.

Christianity has, in modern
times, been gradually superseded by the Faith in Secular Progress. Since Darwin, more and more educated people
have jettisoned Faith in a deity for Faith in a hoped for vision of human
progress.But faith in technological
progress is an illusion too. For the 2000
years after Jesus the Church has been the central organizing principle of
Reality(for Westerners not Muslims, Hindus, or Chinese). And for that I am
grateful. However, I don’t think Moses got it right in Genesis about the
details of creation:the Garden, the
Flood, the Pillar of Salt, the burning bush, or the parting of the Red Sea.They are Ur-myths painted on the
unknowable.Good myth but poor
journalism. Billions of people agree (and contest) that Jesus is the one and
only son of God. To me he is, like us, the progeny of God.Our fundamental stories of who we are and
where we come from are somewhere between vision and illusion.

Having been critical of what
our Society has made sacred, I will digress for a moment to tell you my
creation story. God in his/her infinite
perfection for an infinity of time deigned to become “Real”.He/she can return to perfection and close down
the Reality we currently experience at any time. Thus the essence of God drives
the universe. There are then two eternities: a former one, in the past, when
God was everlastingly perfect.And now the
current one in which we “progress” toward transcendence. WE don’t go to heaven
(or hell). God is in the particulars of living. Some find this materialism dispiriting.I don’t.You have your God illusions and I have my Truth illusions, now can we
all get along?

The God illusion has us
humans quarreling,but the money
illusion is another affront to Truth.Money is a human idea that has perverted Man’s relation to Nature.We have too much money.We DO too much.We have allowed too many people on Earth. I
say this not because I think you (or I) should leave but because of the effect
on other species.We have fairly small
populations of tigers, elephants, rhinos, polar bears and the like and an
overabundance of fellow human. Our servitude to the Money Illusion has
perverted our economics.We wanted to
become rich and we wanted others to also become rich and so we created a
plethora of redemption chits called money that has put too great a strain on
the natural world.Money commoditizes
Nature and we sell our birthright thinking we are becoming better off.For a time it appeared with industrial
civilization that we had found a marvelous way to all become richer but we were
blinded I think by our real dependence on the stored energy in fossil
fuels.Currently, Nature is at peak
everything.What I mean is that our
growth model has reached a necessary plateau—because we cannot increase the
fish catch, the timber harvest, or the oil production any more.We are tapped out.Technology is not a solution for
inputs.We could become more efficient and
we should but it will not save our Progress myth.Progress henceforth should be known as “right
sizing”.Progress is generally thought
of as onward and upward, but– to what?

Sustainability could be considered a
re-building of the connections to the natural world and that would be aided by
jettisoning the idea of money having value.Can we walk this money illusion back to some more helpful arbiter of
exchange between people or are we content to push the boundary conditions—make up
enough money to make everyone rich?Right
now I feel we are in “Let her rip” mode.And I do not think it ends well.

So how can we power down
industrial civilization?Many will say
it can’t be done because our financial system depends on growth.Credit is spending money you don’t have with
someone’s expectation that you will repay. A lot of us are doing that.First we expanded money and now we are
growing credit.Both processes strip
value from the natural world and convert it to human commodities, things that
can be priced.We don’t price a tree in
the forest but we do at Home Depot.Everything has a price that destroys its soul.

But I don’t really believe in
a soul either. Perhaps what remains is the ineffability of excellence.A scent from the past of the Truth lingering
in the present.We should just try to do more with LESS.It’s practical and does not require war on Nature
or on our fellow creatures and neighbors.I have been a long time member of the Church of Reason and Religion of
Progress and I will admit that it is threadbare these days.It looked like a sturdier Faith when I was
younger. Can the Christianity of the
future becomeagain more Vision than
illusion?What must it jettison, what
must it affirm?Without a Vision the
people perish—